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Explorations / The history of the cell / Part 2 of 7

The first cells

How membranes that build themselves and molecules that copy themselves might have come together into the first cells, and the oldest traces they left. 7 scenes.

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Part 1, A planet without life, is open to everyone.

In this part
  1. After the first oceansWhat a cell needs
  2. Unknown, perhaps more than 4 billion years agoBubbles that build themselves
  3. Unknown, perhaps more than 4 billion years agoGrowing and splitting
  4. Before the first cellsA molecule that does two jobs
  5. Unknown; before the last common ancestorThe protocell
  6. About 4.2 billion years ago (one estimate; debated)The last common ancestor
  7. 3.48 to 3.43 billion years agoThe oldest traces
Practise this 7.3Evidence for EvolutionBiology →7.4Common Ancestry and Phylogenetic TreesBiology →
← Part 1 · A planet without life Part 3 · Two kinds of simple cell: coming
The history of the cell, in order
  1. A planet without life
  2. The first cells
  3. Two kinds of simple cell· coming
  4. Oxygen changes everything· coming
  5. The cell that swallowed a bacterium· locked
  6. Many cells· coming
  7. The tree today· coming
Sources
  • Walter Gilbert (1986). Origin of life: The RNA world. Nature 319: 618.
  • Jack W. Szostak, David P. Bartel and P. Luigi Luisi (2001). Synthesizing life. Nature 409: 387–390.
  • Martin M. Hanczyc, Shelly M. Fujikawa and Jack W. Szostak (2003). Experimental models of primitive cellular compartments: encapsulation, growth, and division. Science 302: 618–622.
  • Edoardo Gianni and others (2026). A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand. Science 391: 1022–1028.
  • Madeline C. Weiss and others (2016). The physiology and habitat of the last universal common ancestor. Nature Microbiology 1: 16116.
  • Edmund R. R. Moody and others (2024). The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth system. Nature Ecology & Evolution 8: 1654–1666.
  • Tara Djokic and others (2017). Earliest signs of life on land preserved in ca. 3.5 Ga hot spring deposits. Nature Communications 8: 15263.
  • Abigail C. Allwood and others (2006). Stromatolite reef from the Early Archaean era of Australia. Nature 441: 714–718.
  • Abigail C. Allwood and others (2018). Reassessing evidence of life in 3,700-million-year-old rocks of Greenland. Nature 563: 241–244.
  • Matthew S. Dodd and others (2017). Evidence for early life in Earth's oldest hydrothermal vent precipitates. Nature 543: 60–64.